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India has said it will reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. This is decades later than many other countries, but it marks the first time the country has put an end date on its contribution to climate change.

The target was announced by prime minister Narendra Modi at the COP26 summit in Glasgow yesterday, amid warnings by world leaders about the dangers of failing to act fast enough on emissions.

“A year ago no one would have expected India to announce a net-zero target at COP26,” says at the University of Oxford. “But that’s the nature of tipping points. Once critical mass is reached, it is very hard not to join in.” He says that countries representing 90 per cent of global GDP are now covered by a net-zero target.

However, India’s 2070 date is 20 years later than the 2050 pledged by the UK, US and other high-income countries, and later than the 2060 chosen by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“The date is late, but more important is that India committed to zero at all, which was thought to be unlikely by many,” says at the New Climate Institute, a German non-profit organisation. The long-term commitment will also shape investments today, he adds.

With a population of 1.38 billion and growing, India is the world’s fourth biggest emitter after China, the US and the European Union. But it has some of the lowest per capita CO2 emissions, at 1.9 tonnes per person in 2019, compared with 5.5 tonnes in the UK and 16 tonnes in the US, a point Modi has repeatedly emphasised in the past.

The new goal wouldn’t see the world keep to the Paris Agreement’s aim of keeping temperature rises to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, . Hale says that it is largely the fault of richer countries, which used much of the world’s “carbon budget”, leaving little room for countries like India to grow their economies.

Modi also declared four other steps, including 50 per cent of India’s energy being sourced from renewable sources by 2030. Although he used the word “energy”, the target is very likely to cover only electricity, as such a goal for energy would be nigh-impossible for India.

The country’s renewable energy capacity should reach 500 gigawatts by 2030, up from around 134GW today, and it is also aiming to cut its projected CO2 emissions by a billion tonnes between now and 2030 and cut its carbon intensity – emissions released for each unit of GDP – by 45 per cent.

Modi said yesterday that while the world had focused on cutting emissions, it hadn’t paid enough attention to adapting to a warming world. “This is an injustice to those countries more impacted by climate change,” he said.

India’s 2070 pledge means that all major emitters have now declared a net-zero deadline, effectively putting a backstop on when the world will stop burning fossil fuels. Last week, China, the world’s biggest polluter, formalised its 2060 goal in a plan submitted to the United Nations. The blueprint also committed to peaking emissions before 2030.

The COP26 summit was opened by UK prime minister Boris Johnson likening the situation for world leaders faced with climate change to being James Bond strapped to a ticking doomsday device. He said the meeting in Glasgow could become the moment humanity began to “defuse that bomb”.

Broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough gave an emotional speech, urging leaders to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations and to turn “tragedy into triumph”. He added: “Our motivation should not be fear, but hope.” UN secretary general Antonio Guterres issued a bald warning that: “We are digging our own graves.” Meanwhile, US president Joe Biden apologised for the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement under Donald Trump.

One of the most striking speeches of the day came from Mia Amor Mottley, prime minister of Barbados. “1.5°C is what we need to survive. 2°C is a death sentence for the people of Barbuda and Antigua,” she said, referring to one of the island nation’s Caribbean neighbours. “Can we find it within ourselves to bring Glasgow back on track or do we leave today believing it was a failure before it starts?”

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